He went like one that hath been stunn’d, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man He rose the morrow morn.
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
This world has angels all too few, and heaven is overflowing.
So lonely ’twas that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.
If people could learn history, what lessons it might teach us!
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.
All powerful souls have kindred with each other.
How inimitably graceful children are in general-before they learn to dance.
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing, And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of spring.
I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language-religion-government-blood-identity in these makes men of one country.
The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
An undevout poet is an impossibility.
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth, And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live.
The worth and value of knowledge is in proportion to the worth and value of its object.
To know, to esteem, to love,-and then to part, Makes up life’s tale to many a feeling heart.
In many ways doth the full heart reveal The presence of the love it would conceal.
And in Life’s noisiest hour, There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee, The heart’s Self-solace and soliloquy. You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you, How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.
Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; Oh the joys that came down shower-like, Of friendship, love, and liberty, Ere I was old!